Another day. Another plane. Another flight attendant giving safety instructions that everyone – their minds elsewhere – had already tuned out.
But suddenly, words started to get through: “Should this flight become a cruise, we have a free bonus gift. It’s your seat cushion, which turns into a nifty flotation device. Should we suddenly lose oxygen and you’re traveling with two children, decide which one you like most, and put the oxygen mask on that one first.”
The “safety” remarks continued, with the whole plane now paying close attention and even joining in the laughter…and actually listening to what they should do if there were problems with the plane. Someone had broken through the boredom.
The Feb. 20 New York Times reported a Yankelovich Partners study that concluded: “We are bored despite living in remarkable times… Just as a drug user develops a tolerance and needs larger doses to achieve the same effect, so too have we developed a tolerance to amazing events.” The same article identifies a large part of the problem: “We are a high input society… in a Babel of signals, we must listen to a great deal of chatter to hear one bit of information we really want.”
How are some consumers overcoming boredom? By taking their lives in their hands…literally.
The February issue of American Demographics points out that these sports – not exactly the retiring kind – have the following participation percentages for American adults aged 35 to 54:
– Scuba diving (44%).
– Snorkeling (43%).
– Windsurfing (42%).
– Sailing (42%).
– Bow hunting (39%).
More and more, consumers appear to be signing up for adventure holidays or even “dream weeks,” where they go to a camp to participate in professional-level baseball or hockey games. For instance, American Demographics notes that while only 3% of adults ages 45 to 59 have actually gone on a rafting trip, 13% would like to. Or maybe you’d like to discover, as other 30-to 60-year-olds have, the joys of swinging from a trapeze. All you need to do is contact the San Francisco School of Circus Arts, as reported in the Feb. 1 issue of American Way.
If this is how consumers are spicing up their everyday lives and vacations, it’s no wonder they’re bored to death with advertising and direct marketing. The much-awaited ads during this year’s Super Bowl telecast drew ho-hums from critics and consumers alike. Last year’s murder attempt on the Budweiser frogs (all-time favorites) “electrified [the] Super Bowl ads,” according to a recent column by Bob Garfield in Advertising Age. It took a “shocking story of passion and treachery” to break through the game and the multitude of other commercials.
How did this commercial get itself noticed? Was it the much-loved frogs and the introduction of their replacement, the cunning lizards, that did it? Or was it humor?
“Seen anything good that wasn’t funny?” Jeff Goodby of the agency Goodby, Silverstein asked Garfield. Think about it. What generally cuts through the clutter in your mind? Bet that more often than not, the answer is humor. Seventy-two percent of the “100 Best Commercials of All Time” used humor to reach the target audience, according to agency Leo Burnett USA.
Some believe that humor works because it helps today’s consumers cope with the sometimes not-so-pleasant world around them. The New Pig catalog became famous not only for its rapid sales increase, but for the humor that it used to help it get there. As I often tell my students when I teach, if you can make waste- absorption products interesting though humor, you can make anything interesting.
New Pig (Pig stands for Partners in Grime) teamed its humor with a very customer-oriented approach, giving consumers the best of both worlds – fun and reliability. To call New Pig, you dial 1-800-Hot-Hogs. The great creative is done by their in-house agency, Mudison Avenue. And you wouldn’t want to be caught without your pig-snout baseball cap.
A relative newcomer, BeneFit, also uses humor to attention-getting advantage. A recent cover shows a corseted porcelain Venus saying “I may be the goddess of love….but I still have to work it!” Arturo, a photo of a goateed man pasted on a cartoon body, is “BeneFit’s makeup artist supreme and your new best friend!” You can just hear the accent when you read the copy! Arturo appears throughout the catalog with humorous (but useful) little tips. Product copy gets right to it – for one lipstick the lead-in says “Honey, they’re all fabulous!” – then follows with such lipstick names as Good Vibes, Move Over, Willful and Shocked. Who wouldn’t want them all!
BeneFit has broken through the mass of catalogs with one that screams to be held and read. Humor is used to get your attention, but like New Pig, there’s more to this catalog than just its comedic facade. The copy provides real information while letting you live a fantasy. “Honey snap out of it scrub” may grab you because its name is amusing, but it also goes on to say exactly how long it will take for the product to actually make a difference (three days).
If you use humor, remember to put yourself in the place of the audience – think like they think. There’s the famous story of Miller Lite’s mistake with a commercial showing two older people making out on a sofa. Miller thought the younger audience would think this was funny (and they probably did). But the older audience, who also drank (or used to drink) a lot of Miller Lite, was furious and insulted. End of that commercial.
Humor should be an escape – something we can identify with and give a chuckle at because we could see ourselves in that situation or environment. Humor should not be mean or ridicule. Treat it gently, because as powerful as humor is, bad humor is worse than none at all.
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